Nick Graham

Principal Infrastructure Engineer

Summary

I'm Nick, an experienced systems engineer with a wide range of proficiencies ranging from simple Linux administration to complex automated application service deployments with Kubernetes.

Over the years I've worked to develop a broad set of skills across the IT space, and at the moment I'm using those to support developers and projects at Capital District Physician's Health Plan, a regional health insurance company in upstate New York.

Work Experience

Principal Infrastructure Engineer

Capital District Physician's Health Plan
2016 - Present
  • Architected and executed Single Sign-On (SSO) system expansion to AWS, creating a multi-region, highly available system with no downtime since its creation. This greatly improved the reliability of our authentication system for both employees and customers.
  • Fully automated deployment and configuration management of Mulesoft application server architecture using Ansible, including over 80 individual services across 4 SDLC environments. This allowed for consistent, reliable, quick deployments of new services and updates.
  • Led the containerization of legacy Tomcat services into fully automated solution on Kubernetes. This enabled developers to deploy new services with minimal effort, and provided a consistent, reliable platform for those services to run on.
  • Created many CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins to turn complex processes like code builds, file deployments, or configuration changes into scheduled, or one-click operations. This greatly reduced the time and effort required to deploy changes, as well as reducing the chance for human error.
  • Automated the transition from CentOS to RHEL, and subsequent upgrades to RHEL 9. This reduced the amount of labor required to perform these upgrades by about 80% for the whole engineering staff.
  • Organized and streamlined Ansible playbook usage, including the development of easy-to-use environment build scripts, and personal training/mentoring for other engineers. This enhanced the use of Ansible and improved automation capabilities for everyone's work across the team.
  • Created a custom internal site with Python that integrates with our SSO system APIs. This provides users across the company with a central place to find SSO links, rather than relying on links maintained in wikis or emails.
  • Created an internal Python web tool that allows business users to power on and off server environments on a schedule, allowing development environments to be turned off after work hours, providing about $90,000 per year in cloud cost savings.
  • Supported development teams, providing infrastructure and security expertise to help make project decisions and clear roadblocks.

Technologies used:

  • Ansible
  • Jenkins
  • Kubernetes
  • Linux
  • Mulesoft
  • Nginx
  • Packer
  • Ping Federate
  • Python
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Sumologic
  • Terraform
  • Tomcat
  • Windows

Systems Engineer

Xerox Corporation
2013 - 2016
  • Architected and implemented all of the backup infrastructure required to support disaster recovery for all of the systems in the organization
  • Led VMware expansion to two new datacenters in China, including hardware purchasing, deployment, and configuration.
  • Created a self-service tool for employees to build sandbox environments and adjust the scale of production services
  • Enhanced the system lifecycle process around all of our VMware infrastructure. Everything from creation of new servers, patching, updating configurations, and server decommissioning was streamlined and automated in some way.

Technologies used:

  • Commvault Simpana
  • Linux
  • Powershell
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
  • VMware
  • Windows Server

Volunteer Experience

Firefighter / Apparatus Operator

Wilton Volunteer Fire Department
2024 - Present

Skills & Tools

Application Servers

  • Apache HTTPd
  • IIS
  • Nginx
  • Ping Federate (SAML/Oauth)
  • Tomcat

Automation

  • Ansible
  • Artifact Repositories
  • Jenkins
  • Packer
  • Terraform

Containerization

  • Docker
  • Kubernetes
  • Rancher

Databases

  • MySQL

Hypervisors

  • Amazon Web Services
  • VMware

Operating Systems

  • Red Hat Linux
  • Ubuntu
  • Windows Server

Programming

  • Javascript
  • Powershell
  • Python

Others

  • Active Directory
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Change Management
  • Configuration Management
  • Databases (MSSQL, MySQL)
  • DNS
  • Documentation
  • ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
  • IIS
  • Log Management
  • Mulesoft
  • Nagios
  • Networking
  • Nginx
  • Oauth
  • Physical Server Administration (Blade/Rack)
  • Rancher
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
  • SAN Management
  • Sonatype Nexus
  • Source Control (Git)
  • SSL/TLS Certificates & Ciphers

Education

  • BS, Information Technology
    SUNY Canton
    2013

Certifications

Language

  • English (Native)

Interests

  • 3D Printing
  • Cars
  • Landscaping
  • Mechanics
  • Music
  • Robotics